" And then only five species out of a possible fourteen
were procured. His enthusiasm as a naturalist and collector knew no
bounds, butterflies especially calling into play all his feelings of joy
and satisfaction. Describing his first sight of the _Ornithoptera
croesus_, he says that the blood rushed to his head and he felt much
more like fainting than he had done when in apprehension of immediate
death; a similar sensation being experienced when he came across another
large bird-winged butterfly, _Ornithoptera poseidon_.
"It is one thing," he says, "to see such beauty in a cabinet, and quite
another to feel it struggling between one's fingers, and to gaze upon
its fresh and living beauty, a bright-green gem shining out amid the
silent gloom of a dark and tangled forest. The village of Dobbo held
that evening at least one contented man."
These thrills of joy may be considered as some compensation for such
experiences as those contained in his graphic account of a single
journey in a "prau," or native boat. "My first crew," he wrote, "ran
away; two men were lost for a month on a desert island; we were ten
times aground on coral reefs; we lost four anchors; our sails were
devoured by rats; the small boat was lost astern; we were thirty-eight
days on the voyage home which should have taken twelve; we were many
times short of food and water; we had no compass-lamp owing to there not
being a drop of oil in Waigiou when we left; and to crown it all, during
the whole of our voyage, occupying in all seventy-eight days (all in
what was supposed to be the favourable season), we had not one single
day of fair wind.
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